Mexican Well a Magnet for Cure Seekers : Health: Tales of ‘miracle’ water draw thousands from as far away as Russia.

If faith alone could cure, Ernie Cohen surely would be a healthy man.

Afflicted with AIDS and diabetes, Cohen, 39, has taken all kinds of treatments--insulin, AZT, radiation, vitamins, herbs and acupuncture. Now he is turning to “miracle” water from a well belonging to a wealthy rancher who just happens to be named Jesus.

“I know it works,” said an earnest Cohen, picking at the quick of his bitten thumbnail. “Of course, a lot has to do with faith. I believe God has touched the water. I’m going home to start my treatment.”

Cohen and 40 other Los Angeles residents rode Tlacote Tours--a $500-a-trip “community service”--to this ranch in central Queretaro state on a recent weekend, where they encountered droves of believers like themselves; they waited under a relentless sun to fill their plastic jugs with water that they think is miraculous.

Queretaro state health officials have said the water is just that--water.

But Jesus Chain, who owns the well from which the supply is extracted, is searching for scientific proof that the water is medicinal; he has yet to find any. “It is curing, but we don’t know how,” he asserted.

Each week, men and women come by the thousands from all over Mexico and countries as far away as Russia, suffering from leukemia, breast cancer, brain tumors, leprosy and crippling arthritis. Many limp or hack; they bear open sores and hidden wounds. Others wait in line for hours and sometimes days to collect water for friends and relatives who no longer have the strength to make the trip.

They tell secondhand stories--tales of a friend of a friend who has a daughter--of invalids who reportedly began to walk after drinking the water, of sickly babies who allegedly came to life and of adults who it is said went into the hospital for surgery only to find they no longer needed it. But none of the faithful seem to have met these patients personally.

Chain, 51, said he discovered the water’s powers when his farm dog, Lucas, fell into it and wounds that the animal had suffered disappeared overnight. If that wasn’t enough, Chain and his wife, Karin Mejia, 29, say they found that fewer of the chicks died on their chicken farm than on most others. Their dead pigs didn’t smell. Then, tests showed that the water “weighed less” than normal water, Chain claimed.

To hear Chain tell it, God, pre-Columbian Indians and men from other planets all did their part to make Tlacote water “a revolution in cellular genetics. What we have is a cure for any bacteria or virus . . . the most important discovery in the last 3,000 years.”

Chain was away when two reporters visited his ranch one recent day, but he explained later in a telephone interview that the Bible “prophesied a liquid to cure the world and this is it.”

All men on Earth originate on another planet, Chain went on, but the first man on Earth was born “in Tlacote,” where Chichimeca Indians built a temple “2,900 meters” below Chain’s ranch and right smack underneath the well.

Since the afflicted began showing up at his front gate a year ago, Chain has been giving the water away for free.

“He won’t accept any money,” said Marco Garcia, whose Los Angeles-based Tlacote Tours brings 100 people a month to the ranch. “I’ve not seen him make a dime.”

That is a situation Chain and Mejia hope to change. They are seeking government approval to market the water as medicine. “You feel good helping people,” Mejia said through a drift of cigarette smoke. “But I also think there should be an end to this. . . . I feel we should sell it. It’s a big hassle from Monday to Monday.”

“All God’s creatures have a right to sell,” Chain said. “It’s the divine right of commercialization.”

The sick and hopeful line up continually outside of Chain’s ranch with five-gallon jugs. By 3:30 p.m., when Chain quits dispensing water, 50 people already are lined up for the following morning. At 9 a.m., the first people are let in to fill their bottles and to see la doctora-- that is Mejia, who actually is a veterinarian.

Mejia and the volunteer doctors who help her “prescribe” the amount of water necessary for each patient have thousands of case files--pink for AIDS, green for cancer, yellow for diabetes. She claims the water has turned HIV-positive patients to HIV-negative. But she cannot offer proof because, well, “the files are by number rather than by name.”

While Chain’s well-to-do ranch is clean and attractive and health officials have reported that his water is safe to drink, the town around Tlacote is poor, with open sewers and pigs running through the streets. Water in some surrounding wells has shown bacteria that produce cholera and typhoid.

Neighbors, many of whom have set up shop selling hats, umbrellas and tacos to the multitudes, say Chain’s pilgrims create a mess; they sleep, attend to nature’s calls and dump garbage in the street.

Mejia rejects their complaints, saying: “This is income for them. There were 17 trucks in town when we got here. Now there are 120.”

Chain says that although other wells may be unfit for drinking, his water cannot be contaminated because it is deep, covered and protected by the buried pyramid.